With the BMW i3 electric city car and i8 electric hybrid sports car, BMW is ready to test online sales for the first time, according to Bloomberg.

As an inexpensive way to reach more buyers and recoup the cars' development costs, BMW will sell the i3 and i8 directly over the internet for the first time. The i3 and i8 will also be sold in showrooms, but their initial retail rollout (including the first i-showroom in London) will be among a limited showroom network.

The online sales option is aimed at a generation of drivers used to making daily purchases over the Internet. Retail outlets will be restricted to dealers with high BMW-brand sales volume who have floor space as well as capacity to work with I models' powering technology and carbon-fiber body material. BMW has chosen 45 of its approximately 200 dealers in Germany to sell the i3 and i8, a ratio that will probably be similar elsewhere, says Ian Robertson, the BMW sales chief.

Further details of how I-model buyers, the website and dealerships will interact are still in the planning process says BMW, but sales will be focused on the world's major urban areas, as expected.

The i3 hits the market next year and is expected to start well north of $40000. The i8 will launch in 2014 to the price of over $125,000 (as BMW recently confirmed).

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Realistic and more reasonable prices for i3 should be 15-20 K depending on options and for i8 no higher than 70-80 K
BMW will face competition in this segment that they will either have to rethink the pricing practices or cancel production.

Realistic and more reasonable prices for i3 should be 15-20 K depending on options and for i8 no higher than 70-80 K
BMW will face competition in this segment that they will either have to rethink the pricing practices or cancel production.

Huh? You do realize that his uses a carbon fiber passenger cell and is a luxury electric vehicle right? It was designed from the ground up to be electric it is not a repackaged petrol car. A volt is in the same price range and doesn't even come close in luxury.

What luxury car could ever be in that price range let alone an electric one? The battery pack alone is probably that amount of money...

I personally want one with a ReX system which will be able to go about 700 miles or more on a tank- that is awesome. BMW has already spent 3 Billion on R&D for these cars and they are going to be 3-5 years ahead of the competition easily. None of the other brands outside Tesla and Fisker which are new to cars in general have a product. Audi stopped developing the A2 E-Tron all together and a production version of the E-tron R8 recently erupted into flames during testing.

Time will tell but I think they will hit their 30k units with no issues.